Louisville Players Remaining Bought In to Kenny Payne's Culture Rebuild

Despite a winless start to the Kenny Payne era, the Cardinals' players are remaining steadfast in their buy-in to the culture that Payne is trying to establish.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Ever since the moment that he arrived on campus earlier this year, Louisville men's basketball head coach Kenny Payne has been consistent regarding one message: his first year at the helm isn't about winning or losing, it's about winning or learning.

Payne has made it clear since the summer that in order to establish the "championship culture" he wants to have at Louisville, a long term mindset of growth, development and work ethic needs to be instilled within his players.

Unfortunately, through the first month-plus of his inaugural season with the Cardinals, from the outside looking in, it seems that the foundation for his culture rebuild is not in the best shape.

Louisville has played nine games up to this point of the 2022-23 season, and so far, they are still searching for win No. 1 of the Kenny Payne era. Not only that, but the Cardinals have been far from competitive as of late, losing by an average margin of 25.2 points in their last six games.

Barring a near-miraculous turnaround, it's only going to get rockier from here on out. The bulk of conference play hasn't even started yet, and the ACC currently boasts 11 teams that are ranked inside the KenPom top-100, and six that are in the top-60. Not to mention the Battle of the Bluegrass against Kentucky is still on the horizon.

That being said, even with all the losing that Louisville has suffered up to this point, the players are remaining steadfast in their buy-in to Payne's culture rebuild.

"No, not at all," guard El Ellis said Tuesday when asked if it was difficult at times to buy into the culture Payne is attempting to lay down. "It doesn't matter what's going on, what our record is, I believe in KP. I believe in our staff. I believe everything they're trying to build around this program. I wouldn't change my decision to come here for nothing. I wouldn't change anything that's been going on, that's been happening.

"Of course, I hate that we're losing, but everything happens for a reason. I still feel like we're going to turn it around, and I will get a lot of people off our backs. Just stay confident, just stay patient, and if we just have our faith, we'll be fine."

While the players, for the time being, are stilling buying into what the staff is trying to accomplish long term, Payne knows that wins have to start coming sooner rather than later. If there's anything that can negate a positive culture within any sports teams, collegiate or professional, it's an abundance of losses with no clear direction to reverse course.

Payne says he "can't allow" the constant losing to supersede the efforts that he making in order to establish his culture at Louisville. In the same breath, he also doesn't want to - nor doesn't know if he can - try to establish his culture in a different way than how he is right now.

"It's about the foundation. It really is," he said. "It's about playing the right way. It's about understanding winning basketball, not just playing basketball. Winning basketball is a little bit of the small things. Setting great screens, making good passes, being a good passing team, which leads to being a good offensive team. If you're a bad passing team, how can you be a good offensive team? We're an example of that. We're learning about that, and we're working on that every day.

"I don't want to, and I don't know if I can with this team, try to find another way to build a culture. I trust that the culture that we're trying to do, the foundation of what we're trying to do, is good enough. We just got to play better. We got to play more together. We got to cut out our turnovers and we got to rebound the ball."

In a press conference last week, Payne had a message to the Louisville fanbase in which he pleaded for them to stick with the team through their rough start. Ahead of the Cardinals' matchup with Western Kentucky, Ellis echoed that sentiment.

"Just stick with us," he said. "I know things are rough. It's rough for us, too. We didn't expect to be 0-9. We're the ones out there playing, so I feel like fans gotta see it another way. Think about how we're feeling, and not like, 'oh man, we're such diehard fans, they're not representing the city well.' We're still young adults."

Buy-in, while still seemingly strong with the players, has been hard to come by amongst the fanbase. Following their most recent loss to Florida State, criticism by fans highlighting a perceived lack of emotion from Payne made went semi-viral on Twitter, to the point where former Cards Donovan Mitchell and Damion Lee even stepped in.

"All the stuff that we're seeing, like the negativity that we see on social media, I just feel like people just gotta calm down and just stick with us, because we're still learning. Every single one of us."

Louisville's next chance to silence the mounting criticism and outside noise will come on Wednesday, Dec. 14 against the Hilltoppers. Tip-off is scheduled for 9:00 p.m. EST.

(Photo of El Ellis: Jamie Rhodes - USA TODAY Sports)

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